Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

NURSE SHORTAGE: CALIFORNIA RNS STRETCHED TO THE LIMIT

"Experienced registered nurses, often considered expendable during this decade of managed care, now are stretched so thin that many California hospitals are scrambling to hire more, and some RNs already on the wards fear patient care is being compromised," the Los Angeles Times reports. Making the situation even worse in Southern California, "a mighty flu epidemic has flooded emergency rooms and intensive care units with patients." One Cedars-Sinai Medical Center nurse who wished to remain anonymous said, "I think ... it's dangerous. The number of nurses for patients at times is unsafe." While conceding that nurses had to work extra shifts, Cedars-Sinai chief nursing officer Linda Burnes-Bolton "denied that staffing ever has been insufficient or unsafe." CALLING ALL NURSES In Northern California, the "overall nursing shortage ... is most pronounced in specialty areas," according to Kaiser Permanente's regional director of nursing Doloras Jones. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," she said. In the future there will be "a crisis of supply" ... [and] the "need will be particularly great for nurses with bachelor's or graduate degrees," said Jones. The California Nurses Association has "called upon Gov. Pete Wilson [R] ... to declare an 'emergency care crisis' prohibiting acute care and emergency room closures and any further downsizing," reports the Times. AMERICA'S MOST WANTED According to health care experts, an "aging" and retiring "nurse work force"; "cutbacks on inpatient beds and staffing as a result of managed care; an unexpectantly large influx of sicker patients; closure or scaling down of nursing schools and hospital training programs and expansion of opportunities for young women in the work force outside hospitals" are among some of the reasons for the shortage of nurses. To compensate, hospitals are in "a bidding war" for specialty nurses. Incentives such as "signing bonuses, housing allowances, special training -- even free or discounted meals on site" are being offered by hospitals trying to entice nurses to work for them. Some health care experts say "hospitals are paying the price for ill-considered, overzealous cost-cutting in the early 1990s, as managed care took hold." Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, said, "Health care corporations didn't like the idea they had to pay a primarily female work force so much money. ... They pushed nurses out the door, devalued the profession. They (corporations) are the victims of their own designs." Others disagree. Jones said "the cutbacks and downsizing in hospitals came in response to declining inpatient counts" and now "the increased demand requires some 'rebuilding'" (Marquis, 1/16).

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